swiss charter airline "Hello" ceases operations

[deptrai]

Swiss charter airline Hello suspended all operations as of 21. Oct.

Emergency: hello | welcome on board | schweizer airline (http://www.hello.ch/emergency.html?L=1)

Unfortunate for those it affects

The airline was established in 2003 in Basel by Moritz Suter (the former founder of Crossair, which later became Swiss International Air Lines following the bankruptcy of Swissair). "Hello" was originally a regional scheduled carrier, then relaunched on 1 May 2005 as a charter airline.

( Hello used to "hire" p2f FOs, just came to my mind :rolleyes:)

[Pushbeton]

Well, Hello lost my respect when it was disclosed that they made copilots pay to collect A320 hours. It simply is not a business model to be encouraged, and once more, ironically, it shows that this will not save a struggling enterprise... When will the bean counters be aware of that? And why did the Chief pilots forget how they collected their initial hours back then?

Feel sorry though for all those grounded flight crew and cabin personnel.

[racedo]

So really its a case of Goodbye "Hello" ....

[Victor Inox]

Not just a case of escalating costs in a cut-throat market. Their CFO appears to have cooked the books, too.:=

[harriewillem]

Believing the former CFO on his blue eyes, and now blaming him is an bit of lame excuse.

You run an airline like each company with a management team and AM as head responsible...

So blaming a former CFO... cheap...

[Rabina]

Guess it's tough to run a Swiss charter airline when you don't have the national carrier funding your loss making business. Memories of poor financial management at Crossair resurface as they were pretty much the biggest leach to Swissair before 2001's collapse.

[D-ENIM]

:mad: Whilst the Crossair management were far from a brain-cell among them, the collapse of Swissair was brought about by nothing other than its own internal mismanaged empire-building and lack of foresight.

Integral to Swissair's plan of 1990s expansion was the dream to become the fourth largest European airline. Given Switzerland’s postage stamp size and barroom population, this pipe dream never got far from the pipe. Despite the obvious direction in which the company was heading, in January 2000 Swissair executive management remained amongst the highest paid executives in the world at the time. Swiss politicians and Swissair senior executives were partying in South Africa's Lowveld when the bailiff came to collect his 50 billion CHF whilst his brother shutdown Sabena for good measure!

Granted, subsequent to the Crossair takeover many :mad: poor decisions were made, not the least of which was putting that moron André Dosé in charge. That said, Swissair went out of business because they were a bunch of cocky exceptionalists, not because Moritz Suter was a :mad:, and no-one misses them less than I do.

[Robert Vesco]

Hehehe, spot on! Spot on D-ENIM!

Swissair went down due to total mismanagement, huge arrogance and with billions and billions of Swiss Francs in debt that it could no longer service on that fatal morning on October 1st 2001.

If that debt was all Crossair's fault then Crossair could have bought gold plated aircraft for that money and still have change to spare... :)

However, I'm definitely not out here to defend MS, he's definitely no saint in my eyes! Good riddance that Hello, with it's appalling T&C's and Pay to Fly schemes, went belly up! Those jobs, perhaps with the exception of a small core group with a permanent contract, are not real jobs anyway! If margins are that thin that you need people to pay for their type ratings and fly for free then companies like that are better off bankrupt!

Goodbye Hello! :yuk:

[roulishollandais]

Once more Airline is a strategic activity, not a way to get money.
When Ernest -Antoine Selliere -de WENDEL came to Swissair things went south in Swiss sky :suspect:

[blind pew]

D-emin
Well said
Did the last flight in SR with MS - as a pilot he was better than most of the swiss Germans. The worst manager in my opinion was PF who was as at the helm and now the morons have voted him onto the VEF.

[Wmn]

Robert Vesco,
140 people have lost their jobs, a large number of them are not pilots but hard working guys and gals in both cabin and on ground(real jobs) with permanent contracts. To them it's a disaster that the company most likely will go belly up. Not everybody is spoiled with dozens of employment opportunities to choose from.

[CaptainProp]

Does anyone know which firm is in charge of the debt restructuring? Did some searches but could not find it....

Edit - Found more info, is it correct that they have until end of the month to restructure on their own before the case is handed over to third party for debt restructuring? Anyone?